Sung Won Sohn
Most boards overreact to economic news that will not matter in six months, and underreact to the news that will. A Fed decision or a fresh tariff round lands inside the business as margin compression and forecasts that stop working. Leaders need someone who can tell them which indicators will actually move the next two quarters of performance.
Sung Won Sohn advises boards and executive teams on where the US economy is heading, with a forecasting record the Wall Street Journal has ranked the country’s most accurate.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Sung Won Sohn
- His forecasting record is one of the few in the economics profession that has been publicly audited. The Wall Street Journal has repeatedly ranked him the most accurate forecaster in the country, including first place in 2006 and a top-three ranking in 2012 as the only academic in the top ten.
- Analysis built from inside three institutions most economists only write about. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, as Chief Economist at Wells Fargo, and as President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles.
- A Pacific-rim lens that US-focused commentators rarely offer. Korean-born and long specialised in trans-Pacific trade, he reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has tracked those flows for four decades does.
- Constant presence in live financial coverage. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him regularly on Fed decisions, inflation prints, and tariff announcements. Audiences hear what is shaping markets this week, in the language of the data that week.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Finance and Economics, College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University
- Former Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers at The White House
- Former Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at Wells Fargo Bank; former President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles
- Named the most accurate economic forecaster in the United States by the Wall Street Journal in 2006, with top-five rankings from the same publication in 2010 and 2012
- Named to Time Magazine’s Board of Economists; one of the five most accurate US forecasters by Bloomberg News; most accurate forecaster for the Western States by Blue Chip Publications
- Author of Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy; Chair of the Investment Committee at LACERS, overseeing a multi-billion-dollar public pension fund; Director, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Biography
In 2006, the Wall Street Journal named its most accurate economic forecaster in the United States. The winner was running what he himself described as a one-man operation against forecasting teams at Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and Bank of America. His name was Sung Won Sohn. The Journal has returned to him in the years since, at one point ranking him the only academic in the country’s top ten forecasters.
The forecasting record is built from a career that has sat on three different sides of the economic question. Dr. Sohn served as a Senior Economist on President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, with a brief covering the Federal Reserve and financial markets. He then spent three decades inside Northwest National Bank as it became Wells Fargo, rising to Executive Vice President and Chief Economist. In 2005 he crossed the table entirely, becoming President and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles.
Today Dr. Sohn is Professor of Finance and Economics at Loyola Marymount University’s College of Business Administration and president of SS Economics, his own consulting firm. Reuters, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Bloomberg cite him routinely on Fed decisions, jobs data, and tariffs. His books Global Financial Crisis and Exit Strategy and The New Economy address the questions that still sit on most board agendas.
What sets the commentary apart from other US-based macro voices is a Pacific-rim lens. Korean-born and formerly chief executive of a Korean-American bank in Los Angeles, Dr. Sohn has tracked trans-Pacific trade flows for four decades. He reads US-China and US-Korea exposure the way someone who has lived on both ends of those flows reads them. He also sits on the Board of Directors at Western Alliance Bancorporation and chairs the Investment Committee at LACERS, the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System.
Key speaking topics
- US economic forecasting and the Federal Reserve
- Inflation, interest rates, and monetary policy
- International trade, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers
- The Pacific-rim economy and US-China relations
- AI and the future of business and productivity
- Digital currencies and the future of payments
- Competitive strategy in a volatile economy
Ideal for
- CFOs, treasurers, and finance leadership teams needing a clear read on Federal Reserve policy and interest rate direction
- Board directors and investment committees making decisions sensitive to inflation, tariffs, and global trade flows
- CEOs and strategy leaders in manufacturing, retail, banking, and logistics with material exposure to US-China and Pacific-rim trade
- Asset managers, pension trustees, and financial advisers who need a macro voice with a publicly verified forecasting record
Audience outcomes
- A forecast of where US growth, inflation, and interest rates are likely to move over the next two to four quarters, and the indicators that matter most
- A reading of US-China and US-Korea trade dynamics that goes beyond the headlines, including the non-tariff barriers that often matter more than the tariffs themselves
- A sharper sense of how AI is actually reshaping pricing, productivity, and labour markets, grounded in specific company examples
- A way to pressure-test their own planning assumptions against someone who has sat inside both the Council of Economic Advisers and a major bank’s forecasting team
Talks
A session on how AI is shifting corporate value from products to services, data, and the platforms that sit between.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI is creating and destroying competitive advantage, using named examples including Mastercard
- Why platform control has become the decisive variable in long-term corporate value
- What boards should change in how they plan, price, and allocate capital
A session on how to identify what is actually protecting a business today, and how to defend it when macro conditions keep shifting.
Key takeaways:
- How to pinpoint what is actually creating the competitive advantage today, as opposed to what the org chart suggests
- How leading companies including Walmart, Disney, Netflix, Kodak, and Polaroid won or lost their position when conditions changed
- What CEOs should do, and avoid, when the macro environment produces repeated disruption
A session on what stablecoins and central bank digital currencies mean for corporate finance, payments, and the future role of monetary policy.
Key takeaways:
- How stablecoins and CBDCs are reshaping payments, settlement, and cross-border flows
- What the rise of digital currencies means for the power of traditional monetary policy
- Where the real risks sit for corporations and institutional investors, distinct from the speculative noise around crypto
A session on how major geopolitical shocks reset energy supply, global logistics, and the structural floor for inflation, and what that means for corporate planning.
Key takeaways:
- Why the post-shock energy price floor tends to sit above the prior baseline, with direct implications for inflation
- How supply chains are shifting from pure efficiency toward resilience, and the cost implications
- What boards should do now on cost structure, energy hedging, and supply chain design